


Carried Upwards By The Stream

by slattern



Series: The Seeker Who Sets Out Upon the Way [6]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Has Feelings (Good Omens), Aziraphale Has a Penis (Good Omens), Aziraphale is a bear, Crowley Has a Penis (Good Omens), Crowley Has a Praise Kink (Good Omens), Dom Aziraphale (Good Omens), Dom/sub Undertones, Episode: s01e03 Hard Times, Hand Jobs, Love, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Overcoming profound feelings of unworthiness, Sex in the Bookshop (Good Omens), Sub Crowley (Good Omens), Tenderness, The Blitz, not quite a burnt foot fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:26:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22812298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slattern/pseuds/slattern
Summary: Aziraphale is reminded of that night in 1941.********As is usual during these sessions, Aziraphale thinks of Crowley. In the nowhere space of this room, he can dwell on his friend without agony, feeling only affection. As he drifts deeper into the silty flow of his bloodstream, he is Ophelia, finally relieved of her torment, floating, covered with flowers, held in the impartial mercy of the river.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: The Seeker Who Sets Out Upon the Way [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571059
Comments: 51
Kudos: 105





	Carried Upwards By The Stream

**Author's Note:**

> I never thought I'd write a Blitz fic, or anything else too close to the depictions in 'Hard Times.' Too intimidating! And I love imagining Aziraphale and Crowley in settings we didn't see. But this is the story that appeared. This series is basically therapy for me - so I accept the themes and settings that present themselves and now, it's time to try a little tenderness. 
> 
> Massive, massive gratitude to my incredible, thoughtful, patient beta, [tyrograph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyrograph/pseuds/Tyrograph). Go look at their amazing art!
> 
> Also huge thanks to everyone who leaves kudos and comments, it's an indescribable joy to share the experience of imagining and writing these stories with the other wonderful people who make up this fandom.
> 
> If you like listening to music with fic, this is the song I was feeling when I wrote it. _[Lovers, Anna of the North](https://open.spotify.com/track/6q8onrzcka32nGVrnWYGBQ)_
> 
> Find me on Tumblr: lavraiemonchichi

_He in whom a desire for the Ineffable (Nirvana) has sprung up, who is satisfied in his mind, and whose thoughts are not bewildered by love, he is called urdhvamsrotas (carried upwards by the stream)._

**London, 1958**

Aziraphale lay on the padded table, his miserable corporation twitching with discomfort. Dr. Wei ran a soothing hand along the inside of his calf before swiftly pushing a needle into a tender divot on the arch of the angel's foot. "Ow! That one really hurt!" For a few decades now, Aziraphale has been getting these treatments, grateful for the acupuncturists who’ve joined London’s Chinese emigre community.

"I'm sorry Mr. Fell, sometimes they do that." Aziraphale breathes out, the discomfort of the needles eclipsed by the relief he feels, the channels loosening and opening, the tightness in his flanks that had him restlessly pacing the bookshop finally dissipating. It's a relief to be in the hands of a dextrous, capable human again. It’s been a slog. After the folk healers were chased out by the doctors, the angel was left with no one able to tune his corporation, harmonize the energies in it, forcing him to process the discordant notes of his own desires and feelings alone. Not to mention the daily, exhausting grind of being alive. Miracles keep his body from ageing, but not from aching.

The doctor leaves him, needles vibrating gently in his body. The room - a small bedroom on the third floor of a rundown Victorian house - is warmed by a pot bellied stove in the corner. Aziraphale can hear rain starting outside, hitting the eaves of the cobbled up roofs. Further away are the sounds of the busy street, a polyglot bustle softened by the climb up to his window.

The angel closes his eyes, feeling his body begin to relax, inch by inch. Tendrils of colour, deep vibrations and higher pitched sparks of energy are winding out from each point where the doctor has placed his needles. Aziraphale’s hands, tightly held in fists, release, his palms up, the tiny steel darts in his wrists trembling with a cinnabar warmth, swords prying open the throne room of his heart.

As is usual during these sessions, Aziraphale thinks of Crowley. In the nowhere space of this room, he can dwell on his friend without agony, feeling only affection. As he drifts deeper into the silty flow of his bloodstream, he is Ophelia, finally relieved of her torment, floating, covered with flowers, held in the impartial mercy of the river.

When he returns home, Aziraphale relishes the calm of his physical being. He can feel the golden rivulets of his own power pulsing in their channels, while shimmers of greens, flashes of silver flow in the interstices, between his human cells.

Once he’s inside and settled, Aziraphale realizes he’s going to call Crowley and invite him to the bookshop. Normally he waits for Crowley to turn up, which he always does, every few weeks or so, just before the angel starts to miss him. Or miss him more, to be perfectly honest. But tonight, something is telling Aziraphale he wants to see Crowley while in this state. He wants to be with his friend tonight.

“All right, then?” Crowley’s voice is dry but Aziraphale can detect a hint of confusion and worry beneath the panache. They always speak tersely on the phone. Telephones most certainly have many ears, at least some of the time.

“Quite all right, just had a communique from France…” Aziraphale can never resist a little spycraft, and alluding thusly to his latest case of Bordeaux, as Crowley will surely realize, fills him with delight.

“ _Magnifique_. See you at _19 heures_.” And Crowley’s disconnected the line.

…………………...

By 9 pm, they’re both pissed. Aziraphale certainly hadn’t intended to tell Crowley about his acupuncture treatments, but somehow the demon has gotten it out of him and has been teasing him for twenty minutes.

“Don’t they disapprove of all that Taoist philosophy up there?” Crowley circles a bony finger upward.

“I don’t know about that, and anyway…” Aziraphale trails off, habit stopping him from speaking the words that were forming. That he’s finding it harder to care what ‘upstairs’ thinks about what he does. He looks over at Crowley where he’s sprawled over the side of the sofa. His clothes are soft, draping over his thin frame. Aziraphale’s never seen this outfit before, black wool trousers, high around the demon’s waist, a dark red dress shirt blossoming out of it to wrap his torso. The shirt looks like silk. Crowley’s cravatte most certainly is, black shot with silver, and the angel wants to bury his face in it. He clears his throat, looking down at his hands.

There’s a silence, and as it lengthens, Aziraphale can feel Crowley’s eyes on him. Finally the angel reaches for the wine bottle where it sits on the side table, topping up their glasses.

“Anyway, what does he do to you? Stick pins in your belly?” The last word curls out of Crowley’s mouth as if he’s reluctant to let it off his tongue.

“They’re mostly in my hands and feet as it happens. It’s quite remarkable.”

“In your hands and feet? Really?” The demon folds a flexible leg up onto the sofa next to him. He’d kicked off his leather shoes about an hour ago. “Here?” He’s pointing to the center of the top of his foot, amused eyebrow arching at his crucifixion allusion.

It’s Crowley’s juvenile glee at his own blasphemy that finishes Aziraphale. The demon has been many things to the angel over the millenia they’ve known each other, the centuries they’ve been friends, beloved friends. He’s been Desire, and its partner; Pain. But he’s also been Joy. The joy of laughter, and of loving and being loved, despite it all. It’s love Aziraphale feels, as he laughs at Crowley’s irreverent face, drunkenly tendering his foot to the angel. It’s love, and he’s used that word in his own mind for 17 years. Since that night when he’d first thought; ‘just because a thing _could_ not be, did not mean it _should_ not be.’

Aziraphale’s heart is a vast hall, calm, a banked fire in the hearth. He stands and steps to sit beside Crowley on the sofa, crossing the distance only slightly unsteadily. As he sits, he reaches for the demon’s feet, pulling one then the other into his lap, cradled across the top of his thighs. Crowley, unbalanced by the angel’s sudden movements, slides on the sofa until his head falls against the arm rest. He looks up into Aziraphale’s face for a moment before tilting his head back, eyes closing. Beyond a momentary brush, they haven’t touched each other since that night in the bookshop, after the church.

\------------  
 **London, 1941**

Aziraphale is pouring whiskey for them both with a hand that still shakes slightly. The shock of the events of the hour just past is moving through his body. His eyes seek out the dust covered satchel of books on the floor by his desk, and his heart is painfully full in his chest. He loves Crowley. And Crowley loves him, with such faithfulness that Aziraphale must close his eyes momentarily, a hand out to steady himself.

How can he push his friend away tonight, as though what is between them is something he is ashamed of? “By their works you will know them.” Crowley’s works have shown him to be a truer friend than Aziraphale.. Even in Paris, in their last, tortured encounter, Crowley had given him what he wanted. Had let him keep his eyes closed, had held him as he wept. When has the angel ever offered his friend such tenderness?

Aziraphale turns back, whiskey glasses in hand, crosses the small room to hand one to Crowley. The demon is leaning against a pillar. Crowley usually occupies the sofa during their afternoon and evening drinking sessions, a regular occurrence these decades past. Today he looks unusually uncomfortable, standing in his slightly overlarge suit, hands shoved in his pockets as he slouches like a film noir gangster.

Aziraphale sits on the sofa himself, drawing a small start from the demon, eyebrows climbing above the rim of his glasses. They remain raised when the angel pats the sofa next to him, looking at Crowley with a face he thinks must look like melted wax, or whipped cream, or fresh snow - utterly soft and naked and beaming everything he feels right to Crowley’s eyes, for him to see. Crowley leaves his hands in his pockets, but he crosses the room and sits next to Aziraphale on the battered sofa. The demon’s head lolls against the back of it as he throws himself with a mildly melodramatic flourish onto the cushions, his face turning to the angel.

“That was very kind of you, what you did tonight.”

“Oh angel no, don’t start with thanking me, really.”

“But I must my dear. Not only did you save me from a very inconvenient discorporation, the books... “

“No, no, no…” Crowley lifts off his dark glasses and rubs his eyes, brow furrowed, mouth twisting. Aziraphale can see a streak of grey soot on his forehead, where sweat had gathered at the brim of his hat, as the rubble of the church had smoldered and crumbled around them.

“If you hadn’t saved them, they would have been lost forever. Irreplaceable.”

“Mmmph.” Crowley drags his hand down his face, pulling down the soft corners of his lips as his head sags back against the edge of the sofa. Aziraphale raises his hand tentatively to touch his friend’s forehead. He presses more firmly, feeling the slip of Crowley’s damp skin, the grit of the soot as he wipes across the line of it. Crowley’s breath is soft against his wrist. They are very close to each other. Aziraphale can feel the warmth of Crowley, the pulse of blood and the scent of smoke, and under that, his sweat, his aftershave, his body. He can see the fine lines in the delicate blue-green skin under his friend’s eyes, accentuated with tiny shadings of soot and dust.

Aziraphale brushes his fingers over Crowley’s brow again, dusting away the clinging particles of... what? Of buttresses and bricks, the baptismal font and molecules of Nazi bodies. His touch returns to Crowley once more, until the dark line of dirt and sweat has blurred and vanished. He finds he can’t take his hand away, and his fingers slide up his friend’s face to his hair, coaxing wayward strands away from the closed eyes. The angel is hypnotized by the sight of his own pale skin and pink nails against the oxblood strands of Crowley’s hair, dark with sweat and pomade. As his fingers move across Crowley’s scalp, he sees the demon’s eyes shifting beneath their translucent lids, the bend of his throat offered up unguarded.

“Crowley, it was very kind of you. You must let me tell you that.” Aziraphale’s other hand reaches forward, his palm presses into the center of his friend’s chest, the angel’s hand thrumming with energy against the demon’s sternum. Crowley swallows, adam’s apple moving in his long, corded throat, arched against the sofa back. He is silent.

“You must let me say so, how kind it was, how good you were to do it, to think of me.” Aziraphale leans his body towards Crowley, his hand firm on the demon’s solar plexus. He can feel Crowley’s breaths, staggering slightly now. He wants to catch them, he wants to swallow those gasps in his own mouth. He slides one full thigh over Crowley’s narrow ones, pinning him to the sofa with his weight.

“You must let me tell you so, my dear. You must let me show you how grateful I am for your kindness.” As he speaks, Aziraphale can see his friend’s mouth fall open, tongue wet just behind his parted teeth. Crowley is already hard, he can feel it against his own cock, straining in his trousers where he’s pressed into the demon’s lap. His friend’s smell is all around them, sweetening the smokiness of their clothes.

He presses a little harder into Crowley’s chest, shifting his hips back across Crowley’s body in a slow drag. He can feel the demon’s heart racing, chest thrust forward under Aziraphale, hands palm down on the sofa at his sides. Crowley’s head falls, his eyes opening as he looks down at the angel’s hand firm on his body. After a long breath, he speaks. “Aziraphale…”

“No, you must let me. You must let me tell you how I appreciate you. How good you are to me, how fortunate I am to have such a friend.” The angel brings his hands between their bodies to Crowley’s belt buckle, sliding it open. Crowley sucks in air with a sharp sound. “You must let me.” He can feel the demon’s cock thrust against him, as Crowley lets out a moan, unable to contain his arousal any longer.

“My darling, thank you. Thank you so much for letting me express my gratitude to you. You’re so kind, you were so brave.” He’s reaching into Crowley’s soft cotton briefs, grasps his friend’s cock, heavy and warm. He just holds it for a moment, feeling the heat of it in his palm, looking at Crowley’s mouth, fallen open completely now, the demon’s head thrown back, his eyes closed. He’s barely making a sound except at the end of each exhale, a raise in the pitch, a gasp. When Aziraphale uses his squat thumb to spread precome over the head of Crowley’s cock, each small, slippery stroke of the angel’s fingers draws a higher cry from him. Once he holds his breath through several strokes, before releasing it with a moan like a sob.

The angel’s hand is back in Crowley’s hair now, he can’t keep himself from touching. The restraint of a thousand years is barely containing him. Tangling his hand into Crowley’s short mane, pressing him into the couch with the hot solidity of his own weight, stroking his cock with a firm hand. Crowley is pressing back up towards him, his eyes are closed but his body is thrusting into Aziraphale’s grip.

“Angel...” Crowley’s voice is as burnt and broken as the church.

“Please. Crowley. Let me thank you. Let me give you what you deserve.” Aziraphale’s mouth is against his friend’s ear. He’s speaking as he inhales.

“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” The indrawn breaths are drawing Crowley’s smokey aura, the ruined heat of him, into the angel’s mouth. He can feel Crowley’s cock in his hand begin to pulse, his friend’s body is arching off the couch and into the thickness of Aziraphale’s body holding him down as he comes with a cry, yielding fully for a moment to pleasure.

Azirphale can’t take his hands away yet, stroking Crowley’s cock in gratitude as he shivers and twitches, petting his hair and whispering endearments until the demon’s breathing slows. Even then, he’s still tracing his fingers through the cooling stickiness of Crowley’s come. He wants to rub his face in it, to slip his own turgid hardness through it, taste it, have it inside him. Crowley is soft beneath him, submitting to the angel’s hands on his body.

As Aziraphale holds him, cradling his head and his softened, sticky cock, the demon’s breathing shifts into the deeper rhythms of sleep. Gently, the angel shifts his friend’s body flat onto the sofa, straightening his own legs until his feet hit the floor. A soft snap cleans not only the remnants of Crowley’s climax, but the smoke and dirt permeating both their clothing and skin. He draws one of the sofa’s many blankets down over Crowley’s body, limp and vulnerable in sleep.

In the morning, they enjoy Aziraphale’s entire bacon and tea ration in affectionate silence before the demon takes his leave.

“Be good, angel - I can’t do this every day.” Crowley’s mouth is curved in laughter, but his eyes are already hidden behind his glasses.

“I know my dear boy; fear not, my espionage days are behind me.” They both allow the words to go unchallenged, and Crowley is ducking out the door into the bustle of the morning street.

_______________

**London, 1958**

The two friends sit in silence for a moment, the demon’s feet relaxed in the angel’s lap. Aziraphale slides a hand up the arch of one long foot, into the cuff of those soft black trousers, until he feels the warmth of skin, soft hairs, under his searching fingers. Gently, he pulls one sock off, then the other, resting his hands atop the arches of Crowley’s pale feet, bones articulated beneath the thin skin.

“It’s here, he puts needles here.” The angel’s square thumb presses along the high curve of the demon’s instep, coming to rest in the tender divot behind the joint of his big toe. He slides his thumb back and forth, feeling the pulse along the line, of blood, of energy. He’s looking at Crowley’s face, his closed eyes, as he touches him. After a moment, the demon meets his gaze. Blue and amber, they look at each other as Aziraphale’s thumbs softly stroke the arches of his friend’s feet.

“It doesn’t hurt?” Crowley’s face isn’t teasing now. He curls his toes with the question, settling his heels heavier into the softness of Azirphale’s lap.

“Well, it does sometimes. At the beginning. But once you feel it working, well, it’s quite marvelous.” Aziraphale squeezes gently, his fingers wrapping around the soles of Crowley’s feet, feeling the muscles and bones, the divots and bumps, the warmth and strength. These feet that were bare on the wall next to him at the Beginning, blistered as a gift of love to him 17 years ago.

“That’s nice, angel. That feels nice.” Aziraphale’s fingers slide up the taut wire of Crowley’s achilles tendons, over the soft skin over his calves, and back down again to his soles. He strokes and rubs the demon’s feet, until his eyes drift shut once more, his breathing deepening into a sleepy purr.

“Thank you angel. It’s so nice.”

“No my darling, thank you.”

………….

It’s not an experience he likes to have, waking up with a hangover, but Aziraphale doesn’t have it in him to feel awful this morning. He gently lifts the demon’s bare feet from his lap where they are still resting, and goes to put on the percolator as Crowley is stirring. It’s a lovely day.


End file.
